How to Use Super Glue Properly
- Open the glue container carefully, ideally wearing gloves.
- Puncture the seal (if present) using the back of the glue lid.
- Apply to both pieces of material that you want to glue together.
- Press the pieces together to make the glue spread evenly across the contact surfaces.
- Separate the pieces again carefully right after pushing them together.
- Let the solvent in the glue evaporate for about 10 minutes
- Combine the pieces again, ideally with a weight or clamp holding them together.
- Wait the recommended wait time normally 30 – 60 minutes.
Things Everyone Should Know About Super Gluing
- Just one drop should cover 1 square inch
- Superglue works best on harder surfaces that can have clean edges such as metals, plastics and ceramics. So think solid things that have shattered or broken.
- Use on porous materials such as paper, fabric or foam can weaken the bond by 50 – 90%. You might as well be using tape or paper glue at that point.
- Proper use provides tensile strength of 1,000-5,000 psi; misuse lowers it to 100-500 psi
- Was discovered in 1942 by Dr. Harry Coover trying to make transparent plastic gunsights. ( Ironic he was trying to make something to help people tear each other apart but made something they can stick themselves back together with.)
Why Should I Care?
If you are anything like me you probably have just been dumping enough glue to feel like it’s going to get everywhere (including your hands, somehow always sticking part of your hand to itself) then sort of holding the pieces together. Bonus if I have the patience to place the pieces under some sort of rock or something I grabbed last minute from the garden.
Well if you do it anything like this you may have also noticed that unless the thing you are gluing is light and flimsy, such as two pieces of paper, they will almost certainly struggle to stay together. For example our beloved toilet seat I sat down on too quickly after consuming food from a certain Tex-Mex food chain.